Website certificates, such as Secure Sockets Layer certificates, represent an important part of e-commerce and Internet security. For example, a website certificate issued by a Certificate Authority may both assure visitors of a particular website that the website is authentic (i.e., not a phishing web site) and may enable visitors to securely communicate with the website (via, e.g., the Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure protocol).
Because the field of website certificates is constantly evolving, Certificate Authorities may attempt to proactively identify issues with the website certificates used by their current customers. For example, some Certificate Authorities may use web crawlers to access and gather information from their customers' websites that may be helpful in identifying misconfigured and/or expired certificates. Unfortunately, web crawlers often require a significant amount of computing power and bandwidth, are expensive, and are often unable to successfully access websites that require user input (such as websites that require that users complete a login process or complete a human-verification test, such as a CAPTCHA).
Accordingly, the instance application identifies and addresses a need for additional and improved systems and methods for discovering website certificate information.